DTH scheme to provide money directly to beneficiaries

New Delhi: After the direct benefit transfer project, the government is now planning to usher in a Direct-To-Home (DTH) scheme to plug leakages and handover pensions, work wages and other entitlements directly to beneficiaries across the country.

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said that the scheme has been initiated in Andhra Pradesh and the need to bring out such a programme was thought as the government was witnessing that funds of welfare schemes are getting ‘leaked’ rather than reaching legitimate beneficiaries.

"Today (in) our delivery system, the leakage is more and the coverage is less. Whether it is food security, whether it is health, whether it is pensions, whether it’s Mahatma Gandhi NREGA. You take any programme. We have a lot of money but how much money actually reaches the beneficiary is a big question mark,” Ramesh said.

"It's not a question of money. It's a question of changing the system of delivery and what we have started in the last one year is a fundamental reform of the welfare delivery system involving banks and post offices,” the Rural Development Minister said.

"I am very happy to say today that in Andhra Pradesh and so in Jharkhand, with help of post offices, we are going to be in a position to transfer pensions, maternity benefits scholarships, wages to the family at the family's door step," Ramesh said while delivering a lecture at an event of the paramilitary CRPF in New Delhi.

He said that the DTH is already functional in Andhra Pradesh and will begin soon in Jharkhand and ‘in other states it will be taken up very soon’.

"In about two years time all wages, all pensions, all maternity benefits, all subsidy schemes meant for the people will actually be delivered electronically not to the bank account or the post office but directly to the family. It's really DTH, direct-to-home through the help of micro-ATMs, modern technology, mobile connectivity; we would be able to transform the system of welfare delivery," he said.